This invention relates to the detection and characterization of a fault occurring in an electrical or power distribution system; and, more particularly, to a system and method incorporated in a two-way automated communications system or TWACS® to identify affected power lines including a particular bus, feeder, phase, etc., to selectively poll transponders installed with electrical meters at facilities to which the power is supplied to quickly identify and map the extent of an outage occurring anywhere within the system.
TWACS technology, various aspects of which are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,940,396, 5,933,072, 5,486,805, 5,262,755, 4,963,853, 4,918,422, and 4,914,418, has been found to have certain inherent advantages in determining the location of power outages which occur in an electrical distribution system. This is done by sending a communication signal from a master station within the system to poll all of the electrical meters installed in that portion of the system from and to which communications with the meters are sent. A drawback with the current protocol for detecting the outages is that the polling needs to be done continuously; or, the polling needs to be triggered in response to an event (outage) so that the scope of the event can be determined, and subsequently the extent of restoration of the power distribution disrupted by the event.
Since polling during restoration is usually under the control of personnel responsible for the restoration, triggering a poll is not a problem. However, determining when to poll in response to a new outage is often problematical. If polling is done too soon, the extent of the problem may not be readily determined. Too late, and response to the problem may be delayed, prolonging the time when customers are without service. It would be helpful therefore to incorporate within a TWACS a means by which polling to determine the extent of an outage is reliably triggered after a fault occurs.